The emotional content of many of Kollwitz’s prints and sculptures was profoundly shaped by the events she experienced as a German civilian during World War I. In 1914 her younger son, Peter, enlisted as a rifleman and soon after was killed in Belgium. In this lithograph, Kollwitz placed herself and her two sons at the center of a huddled mass of women and children. In February 1919 the artist wrote of this work: "I have drawn the mother who embraces her two children; I am with my own children, born from me, my Hans and my Peterchen." Themes of grief, death, and motherhood continued to pervade her work through the early years of World War II, when her grandson, also named Peter, died on the battlefield.

Bibliography

"Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1984," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 44, no. 1 (1985): p. 24-52.